Ottawa: Hintonburg

Hintonburg
Ottawa, Ontario

Hintonburg is an older neighbourhood on the west side of Ottawa. A commercial strip runs through the neighbourhood along Wellington Street. North of Wellington is a working class neighbourhood of small wooden houses on narrow streets probably dating to around the turn of the century. The houses south of Wellington are mostly brick and appear to have been built later, some well into the 1920s and 30s. Today the neighbourhood is considered "up and coming" and seems popular with the artistic community.

We'll start in the area north of Wellington:

_

Gambrel roofs are very common in Ottawa

An old industrial area. Some factories have been replaced with modern infill.

Good Hintonburg(Ottawa)pics!

Flar: Good pics of the Hintonburg area of Ottawa!

I like the brick architecture found in parts of it and noting the Gambrel roofs-older Dutch style architecture had them also here on LI-like some older LIRR station buildings like Huntington or Bay Shore.

Is that neighborhood-noting the French warning sign-predominantly French or English speaking?
LI MIKE

I would say this is a more English neighbourhood, but there are many Francophones in Hintonburg and throughout Ottawa. It's a bilingual city. The highest concentrations of French speakers are on the eastern side of the city, particularly Vanier and Orleans.

Gambrel roofs and double decker porches are seen extensively throughout the older parts of Ottawa. The other really noticeable things about Ottawa's domestic architecture compared to that of southern Ontario are the flat roofed houses and the French Canadian influence.

These photos bring back memories. I lived in a house on Oxford street near Parkdale market during the summer of one of my undergrad years. The area certainly had a lot of charm, but it was also pretty trashy. Your photos give it a sort of "postcard poverty" look to it, and, indeed that's kind of what it's like. I remember one Saturday morning I played basketball behind that big Catholic church on Wellington with a local twelve year old (who schooled us, incidentally). Anyway, all of a sudden this guy with a mullet, a Trans Am t-shirt and flip flops comes down the stairs from a duplex across the street holding a bottle of Wildcat and starts yelling at us. We told the kid we'd have things under control. "Oh, just ignore him" he replied "that's my dad and he's probably drunk."

I spent almost 15 years in Ottawa and have a number of friends who live near or in Hintonburg, so I recognize the area quite well (one home is even recorded in our pictures).

Hintonburg - and nearby Mechanicsville - are a unique part of Ottawa, possessing their own particular look. Both are gradually being gentrified (or just fixed-up a bit) as the interest in living near the downtown has grown (along with house prices).

Hipster Duck: you're anecdote is "so the neighbourhood." I can recall being at the nearby Mac's Milk when a guy walked in loudly requesting the cooler "where the booze was stored."

Roughly speaking, it says 'attention for our children they may be your own.'

so will we be seeing hintonburg featured on the maury povich show some day in the near future?

strange sign man. i guess they thought that running over a kid is not a big deal to motorists unless it's their own kid. and that graphic is bizarre. do they have a problem with kids laying in the street or something? maybe they should spend less money on creepy signs and more on benches.

member since april 23 1847. over 250 539 posts in morse on ticker tape, 368 067 by mail and 40 033 over the internet. 75 posts sent by pigeon & 25 by dog but only 12 arrived.

Hipster Duck: you're anecdote is "so the neighbourhood." I can recall being at the nearby Mac's Milk when a guy walked in loudly requesting the cooler "where the booze was stored."

I have to wonder if it was the same dude.

Ha ha, speaking about that Mac's milk (or whatever the convenience store on the north side of Wellington, east of Parkdale was), I was there during the summer of the blackout. Not even half an hour after the power cut out, a couple of us thought that the Mac's might be getting rid of ice creams and popsicles from its freezer, so we walked over there to see what we could get. Turns out that ten people already had the same idea. Again, they were wearing ratty wife beaters and shirts with sleeves cut off, and the Indian store clerk was frantically waving his hands and shouting "No free ice creams!"